Marc Dalessio

I’ll be having another exhibition for charity next week at the Osteria di Santo Spirito. The paintings are all sketches from this winter painted in the Oltrarno of Florence and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Amici di Santo Spirito association. The opening reception will be on Thursday, February 25th from 6 to 9 pm. You can see some of the work here.

Tomorrow is the vernissage for the first show I’ve ever ‘curated’ (I actually chose the artists, but not necessarily the pieces). There is a lot of excellent work on display from the teachers and alumni of the three traditional painting schools here: The Angel Academy of Art, Charles H. Cecil Studios, and the Florence Academy of Art.

The opening will be from 6 to 8pm at the Cami Gallery so if you’re in the neighborhood please stop by. The address is via della Condotta 36r:

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Here are some images from the show:

Update: Here is a very short time-lapse film of the evening, you can use pause to see frames individually (sorry for the lazy photography, but I didn’t want to run around with a camera all night).

At the moment I am teaching the Florence Academy of Art’s landscape painting class along with Jordan Sokol. Princess Giorgiana Corsini has generously given us the use of the private gardens at her palazzo, which is one of the more beautiful places to paint on an April morning. I took a few pictures this morning as the place is so stunning.

One interesting thing about the course in general is that the advanced painting students tend to have more difficulty that the intermediate group.  I think they assume that because they have painted so much in the studio already that it should be just the same outside. It is actually very different, and they tend to get frustrated quicker that the students with less experience in painting. Another problem I notice every year is that the students bring the wrong materials and think they can just wing it. Painting is so difficult even when your materials are all perfect, it becomes almost impossible if you have missing or incorrect equipment.

This year the class is going well. Today was only our second meeting and already the work is showing great improvement.

On Friday April 17th, Greg, Josh, Leo and I will be having an open studio in our beautiful 19th-century painting studio in Piazza Donatello. Everyone is welcome. You can pop by during the day to beat the crowds if you like, but let someone know you’re coming. Otherwise we’ll have fine wine and even better art from 18:00 onwards.

Leo and I will open the studio to the public on Friday afternoon from 1 pm to 8 pm. We will have nibbles and wine in the evening. The address is 31 Piazzale Donatello.

Everyone is welcome, but RSVP if you can so we have an idea of numbers.

Thanks to everyone who came, we had a huge turn-out. Everyone was very complimentary about the work and the space (and the wine), and we even managed to sell some paintings despite the fact you could barely move around inside the gallery. Below are some images from the evening, and the work can be seen on the Cami gallery website.

I wasn’t really drinking 3 glasses of wine at the same time.

Alba and Leo pose for our professional photographer.

The invitations have been mailed and the catalog should be printed by the end of the week. For my part all the paintings are ready and framed and waiting by the door.

The gallery has asked for 25 paintings, but most of the work I did this year is quite large, and I don’t think they can honestly fit it all. It will be nice to have too much work for a change and just show the best of it.

You can see the work on their website.

I had intended on focusing more on my teaching this year. All things considered however, I still managed to get a lot done.

I’m quite pleased with my Florentine paintings this year. For years I haven’t painted seriously in the city as I felt somewhat bored of the views I see everyday. Then I got a commission to paint Piazza Tasso, which is not considered the most beautiful piazza in Florence, but it has a special meaning to me so I was very happy to be asked to capture it on canvas. Here is an image: 

The painting was quite successful (I felt, and the clients were happy). An antiquarian saw this in a small show I had and asked me to do a series of ‘unusual’ Florentine scenes for a show this October. The work is at the photographers at the moment, but I’ll try to post more when the images come back. The gallery website would not appear to be up and running at the moment…

I’m currently working on one of the larger portraits I’ve ever painted. I also have very little time to do it as the sitter is about to have a baby. Luckily the room where I’m working is the largest room I’ve ever had to do a portrait commission in, and it is so much easier to paint fast when you have this amount of distance to see the model from.

Here is a quick time lapse film of the first four days. A last minute idea using my cellphone camera, so the quality is not the best. The jumps in progress are because the battery kept dying…

(click to play the film)